6/27: How It Is

Here's a little trap that sometimes trips up everyone.

It's such a cloudy day,
Seems we'll never see the sun,
Feel the day has possibilities.
Frozen in the moment,
The lack of imagination
Between how it is and how it ought to be.

Grief is a messy, raw, unending thing, but that doesn’t mean it will always feel the same, or hurt the same. The hole in your heart doesn’t ever close; you just grow around it—but you do grow, eventually, with enough time and distance.

“How It Is” is not about reaching that far horizon, however. It’s a song that acknowledges that sometimes, you are just gonna feel shitty. Because you’re caught between how it is—meaning, you miss the person you love—and how it ought to be—meaning, they ought to be here, with you. Yes, you’ll move on, but sometimes, you just need to experience the gulf between those two states for a while.

The irony is that while you’re held captive by that how it ought to be of your past, you’re unable to imagine a better, brighter tomorrow—that is, how it really ought to be for the future.

“How It Is” itself drifts between two states: driving power chords on the verses, strung together by a softer acoustic section on the chorus. It’s two musical states of matter, stitched together by grief.

It’s a tough song to casually listen to, but it’s one of the most impactful on Vapor Trails and, as such, a hard one to skip. Like most songs on Vapor Trails, I prefer the original version to the remix, but your mileage may vary, so I’ve included both versions of the song in this post (the original is in the Spotify link, upthread).